HOUSTON – On Tuesday night, a fight at a southeast Houston restaurant turned into a brawl right in the middle of the dining hall.
Customers inside Bayou City Wings recorded the fight on their cellphones and the video has gone viral online.
[WATCH: Bayou City Wings brawl]
“I'm just embarrassed for my guest and employees had to see people act like that,” said Bayou City Wings president and CEO Charles Bryan over the phone. “I was ashamed, because I want my restaurant to be family-friendly and that does not look very family-friendly.”
The fight started around 10:40 p.m. in the bar area.
A man wearing a blue shirt can be seen in the video sitting at the bar by himself when someone from the group behind him comes up to him.
There’s an exchange between the two men and moments later there’s pushing, shoving and chairs being thrown.
At one point, a woman in a black shirt and shorts is seen throwing chairs at the man in blue.
“It's an unfortunate incident. It's a family restaurant. We try to offer a safe environment for a guest and employees that come in here and then every now and then you get people who kind of want to ruin the night for everybody else,” said Max Thweatt, Bayou City Wings director of operations.
Thweatt said this is the first time he’s ever seen something like this.
“We offer a safe environment. This is the first major incident that we've had in a very, very long time here at this establishment and any of our Bayou City Wings,” said Thweatt. “I'd tell them (other customers), 'Come on in. It's a safe fun place. We're going to do our part to make sure something like that doesn't happen again.'”
Regulars who frequent the bar and grill said they were shocked to see the video.
“It's just surprising that people can act like that and can destroy property like that with no regrets. It's just kind of despicable to see,” said Renee Cuelar, a regular customer at Bayou City Wings. “Usually, it's a place where families come, children come. They close at 11 so it's not a place that stays open really late. It has a small bar.”
When police arrived, the group throwing the chairs had already left.
The restaurant said it’s not sure what they were fighting about, but said it’s using this situation as a learning lesson.
“I'd say we're looking into our policies that we have in place right now, into how we handle situations like that, and we're going to improve upon them already, but we can't predict the future. We can't tell who’s going to come in here and cause problems,” said Thweatt.
“I think it’s our responsibility to learn from this and maybe identity some policy things that we need to take care of and training so we can identify this type of situation earlier and separate the parties, offer free food or whatever to diffuse the situation,” said Bryan.
The restaurant said it’s still investigating what happened.
No one was injured.
Thweatt said the group left without paying part of its tab.
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